Resident Evil Village finally showed off its coming DLC pack at the recent Capcom Showcase with a few big surprises, one of them being literal - the towering Lady Dimitrescu will be playable in the games bonus mode, The Mercenaries. Arriving alongside her "brother," Karl Heisenberg, and series hero Chris Redfield, the three new cast members expand the roster to four, bringing unique toolsets to deal with the game's cavalcade of foes. Though it was a small snippet of gameplay for each of the new playable characters, there's room to speculate based on what we know about Lady Dimitrescu herself and what she does in her roughly 10 seconds of screen time.
[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Resident Evil Village.]
Lady Dimitrescu was the first "lord," one of four powerful foes that barred the way to the game's climax. Conquering timelines and forums the world over, both the creative team at Capcom and the actress for Lady Dimitrescu hadn't anticipated the character's internet fame being Resident Evil Village's first significant foe; she was dispatched in the game's opening hours. Though this was disappointing to fans of the imposing vampiric lady of the castle, the game's developers found a way to bring her back via the coming additional content, also enabling players to assume the role of the game's iconic tall lady. Though Lady Dimitrescu is only visible in the first person in the future Village DLC, the team took great care in replicating what it means to look through her eyes in combat.
In the trailer uploaded to the Resident Evil YouTube channel, Lady Dimitrescu prominently stands high above her foes - and she should. At nine feet, six inches, RE8's Lady Dimitrescu towers over other people. First, she employs her herculean strength to chokeslam lycans into the ground with a single hand. Moments later, the vanity desk shown in her private quarters early on in Resident Evil Village is hurled into swaths of enemies, reminiscent of the rather tense scene it first appeared during the game's campaign. Later in the Capcom Showcase presentation, Lady Dimitrescu is shown to need to duck to go through doorways, further emphasizing the incredible height difference between her and every other character in the game's cast. Shortly after this, we see the Vampiric Countess joust forward with her tobacco pipe to skewer an enemy, capped off by a fun taunt-like action following the attack.
Lady Dimitrescu Looks Like A Close-Up Fighter In RE Village DLC
It seems as though Lady Dimitrescu is also capable of commanding swarms of bugs - much like the ones Lady Dimitrescu's daughters in Resident Evil Village were comprised of - to trap and eviscerate foes. The lord of Castle Dimitrescu will likely strongly emphasize close-quarters combat, with guns irrelevant to a character with as many powers as she has. From the campaign, it's also known that Lady Dimitriescu has retractable razor-sharp claws that can cleave flesh from bone, as the unfortunate Ethan Winters discovers in one of his near-death experiences. Skills like the desk toss and the power claws may be skills that exist on a cooldown timer that will exist for her to dispatch large groups of opponents in the absence of grenades and mines. Most of Lady Dimitrescu's combat will likely involve her pipe, throws, and punches instead of pistols, shotguns, and rifles.
Of course, there's always the chance she may also be hiding a trump card like the one she uses in Resident Evil Village's first boss fight - her transformation. Though it's far from likely that the Noble Vampire will resign herself to the grotesque for logistical reasons, there remains a chance that elements of her transformation could emerge in the form of a powerful special attack. Jack Krauser once used this attack style in Resident Evil 4's The Mercenaries mode, when he would slowly build up a meter to unleash a devastating lunge forward with a temporarily transformed arm. Whichever way her gameplay takes shape in the Resident Evil Village DLC, here's hoping that Capcom continues to meet Lady Dimitrescu's high expectations.
Source: YouTube/Resident Evil